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Remember the old borders we used to make for the sides of our pages years ago? They were often intricate, time-consuming, and sometimes even a distraction from the photos.
Edge gatherings are similar to borders, but they’re much easier to put together and they’re way cooler.
They’re also not so cumbersome. Click to read more…
When you hear about white space in scrapbooking what do you think of?
I hope you mostly think of the second one.
I don’t say that because there’s anything wrong with the first one — just that it’s a very limited view of white space, and white space is an essential part of every single layout, no matter what the layout is like.
Before I learned about design principles I had this growing sense that the spaces I was making between my 5-7 photos and my cropped papers made a huge difference in my pages, though I couldn’t yet say why. Then I started teaching myself to paint. One thing I learned is that paying attention to the spaces around the subjects in your paintings are at least as important as the subjects themselves.
From then on this phrase has always stuck with me: Mind your space!
You don’t need formulas for how much space to use at varying spots. Just pay attention to it and ask if the spaces you’re creating when you lay things down are pleasing and deliberate.
This simple act of redirecting your attention will make an enormous difference!
All these years I’ve been talking about design and how to use space, I’ve never talked much about “trapped white space.” I’ve rarely had to deal with it myself so it never occurred to me until recently to talk about it.
How is it possible I have very rarely run into trapped white space on my pages? Before I even knew what it was I figured out early how to place my items in certain ways that prevent you from trapping white space altogether.
So this week we made a video tutorial where I share…
For a larger study on maximizing your white space, other episodes related episodes that Paperclipping Members can watch are:
You must have a membership to watch the videos. Click here to find out about a Paperclipping Membership.
Ready for some video tutorials? Click here!
For years I’ve been recommending scrapbookers organize stuff based on the way they hunt for things. Well, I’ve been refining my own system and this year I’ve hit on one that has revolutionized it all for me in a way that no other organization re-do ever has.
Today I’m excited to share with you my 3-part system for storing patterned paper. I’ve never heard of anyone else who organizes like this so don’t give up on this post if the first two parts of the system seem crazy. The third part will make you feel better and with all three parts together you have every possible way I can think of to organize your paper.
Ready to see how it works?
Part 1 – Store 12×12′s by Mood and Tone
There’s a pretty limited number of emotions and moods. Our patterned papers reflect a good handful of them, both in the colors and in the patterns themselves.
Sort them by mood and put your favorite papers of each mood in the front. When you pull out the photo(s) you want to scrap, ask yourself what the mood is and then go to the patterned papers for that mood.
Paper choice used to be the slowest part of my process after journaling, but now I find my paper within seconds. I keep expecting this to stop working and so far it continues to blow my mind! If you’re skeptical, read what one of the Paperclipping Members said after she watched the related video tutorial I posted to the membership:
Oh my, I think I’m sold. I just reorganized all my papers using this method (I was using by manufacturer before and it was cumbersome to flip through everything every time, but color alone didn’t work for me so I stuck to brand). I feel liberated already. It took me less than an hour (I don’t have too much, maybe 80 full sheets or so) but I think the ease with which it came together indicates something. I started just putting things into piles and at first I had way too many piles, but I started to come up with preliminary categories and tweaking as I went. I found that as I continued I would come upon one or two “ah ha!” pieces that just totally screamed whatever I was trying to say, and then it was easier to put the harder to categorize papers with those obvious ones. I ended up with seven of my own categories that I feel great about.
The real test came when I was done however. I’ve been staring at these two photos on my desk for a couple of weeks now–I wanted to use them with orange and cut part of this truly pretty orange paper with a graphic white pattern. But something was totally off and I was making no progress. I looked at them again tonight after the reorg, and decided they were actually “whimsical/fun” photos and pulled out a large white/orange dot pattern from that folder. There is no comparison, it works now–even though the oranges are basically the same! It just feels better.
Thanks so much, Noell!
PS of course, when my boyfriend asked what I was doing, and I said that was organizing my paper by how it makes me feel, he thought I was crazy. But when he saw how quickly I was done, I think even he was impressed. He is used to seeing me obsess over half-finished organizational schemes for much longer than this took!
Part 2 – Store Scraps Together
All scraps smaller than eight or so inches wide go together in one tray, tin, or other container.
Yes, all of them, together.
Does that idea make you twitch? Well guess what? You will find the most enchanting paper combinations this way — ones you could never have planned, dreamed of, nor found in a store and created by even your favorite designers.
Whenever I go to weed out the scraps I no longer love, serendipity happens. Here are two layouts that have resulted from this…
And just a note — I store most of my screen-printed transparencies along with my paper. They might be made of a different material but most of them function like patterned paper, so I don’t see any reason they should be separated.
Part 3 – Store 6×6 Paper Pads Together
Do this in a way that you can flip through them and easily see the fronts. Mine are in a wooden box.
Obviously, I’m the last to do this, not the first. But it’s a great part of this system because it allows you to hunt for your papers in some of those other ways we all sometimes do:
This way you won’t be lost if you’re worried about not having your large sheets and your scraps organized by color or manufacturer. Because companies put a sampling of the patterns on the front of the paper pads, you can quickly flip through the pads to see what your options are. Then you can pull from there.
All 3 Parts Working Together
With this 3-part system in place you can now look for papers in all of the possible ways I can think of, not just one:
Paperclipping Members who want to launch a study of topics related to this — organization, mixing and matching patterned papers, and scrapbooking with scraps or by mood through via design principles — can watch these video tutorials:
I also go into a lot of detail about patterns and moods in my design course, Design Your Story from The Ground Up.
Want to know more about a Paperclipping Membership? Click here!
If you’ve ever watched a tv episode where they show you how to arrange flowers, then you know they’re typically arranged in a visual trinagle. In scrapbooking you mainly hear about placing three embellishments in a visual triangle, but that’s not really what the floral designer means when she’s talking about flower arranging.
Triangles are a key design principle in every visual art from architecture to interior design, to landscaping, etc. Yet the triangles are not obvious and they don’t usually involve three embellishments, either.
So here are five design concepts that will expand your view of using visual triangles and all that you can do with them as you design your pages…
1. You can create a general overall triangle shape when layering papers, creating layered embellishment gatherings, or collaging items together.
2. In art and design, triangles are rarely exact so it can be confusing at first to see the triangle, even when it’s pointed out. Triangles in design and art are only triangles in a very general sense and are formed more by visual weight than exact lines.
3. When making a visual triangle with three items the way we commonly do in scrapbooking, your items don’t have to be the same. To create a triangle the items should just mimic each other in some way, meaning they should repeat at least one characteristic.
4. When your triangulated items are repeating a common characteristic, they pull your eyes from one to the other.
5. A visual triangle can have more than three items. The important thing is that your items are carrying your eyes in a general triangular shape, and that you have balance.
These concepts are freeing and will take your triangles from predictable to practically invisible. But they’re there, and they’re doing their job!
Shine on,
Noell
P.S.> Some of these concepts can be tricky to understand without examples. I wanted to share all of them with you because once you get them they give you more freedom and opportunities when creating, so I made a video tutorial that demonstrates all these concepts and more on a bunch of different scrapbook pages.
The video is for Paperclipping Members. Click here to learn about membership.
If you’re a member you can head over to the Member’s Area or iTunes to watch the video now!
Want to know how to get my videos? Click here! :)
I got a question that was such a good one I decided to share it with everybody in an email.
Irene Dunne sent me a layout for feedback. All her photos and the title were against the edges of the page. She wanted to know how she could fill the space of her layout without moving the rub-on title. I gave some suggestions in my live webinar forMembers for NSD and Vicki Lee sent this question after attending:
“I’ve seen some layouts that have a lot of white space. When is itappropriate to have that much white space, and if you want to haveit, what are the parameters about how big that space can be? The page looked pretty good to me, even with all the empty space, but I know that [you] said that it really needed something there.I
understood the solution, but just wonder about the use of large amounts of white space.”
At the beginning of the session I said that any feedback I give is subjective, not “right.” I wouldn’t say that her page “needed” to have something in the white space — just that I found myself feeling like the layout wasn’t complete.
You see the difference? I told her the result her page had on me,and answered her question for how she could adjust her focal point if she wants to.
So what’s the answer to Vicki’s general question about white space?
There is not a set appropriate amount of white space. There aren’t parameters for how big a space can be, but there are design principle for what seems to work most often for most purposes that tell you what your white space will cause in the viewer of your page.
1. Placement:
If you put your subject one-third of the way in from the edge it feels comfortable and intriguing.
Things on the side feel like they’re side things and not the main thing.
Since Irene’s photos and title were at the edge, the main subjectwas in the bottom corner, and she was asking me for help, I suggested she add a new focal point to the spot that was about 1/3rd of the way up from the bottom, and that she make it black and white so it would blend into the grayish background and preserve her intention of soothing white space.
2. Size:
Here’s the best guideline I can share in terms of size: Do you like it? Is the attention going where you want it to go? Does it feel the way you want it to feel?
The more white space you have, the more your eye goes to that empty space instead of the subject. Also, the more white space you have, the more calming the effect is. Some people find a lot of space too calming — in other words, boring. Others find it peaceful and beautiful.
I’m in the second camp. I love art with a lot of white space. But in photography and scrapbooking I tend to want the subject to stand out more immediately, so my subjects are a little bigger. But if you love the calming experience of noticing the beautiful white space first, and then being eventually drawn into your subject second (because yes, the eye will go there before it’s done looking!), then do it! Especially if a calm feeling will enhance your story!
I’m constantly trying to remind people that design principles aren’t rules. They’re there to help you know what type of effect you cause when you place things in certain ways. You get to choose what effects you want to cause.
With Irene’s subject on the edge, it looked like a border to me and I found myself looking again and again at the center and feeling like the page wasn’t finished yet. At the same time, I really enjoyed her page and how soothing it was. Irene gets to decide whether she’s happy with that result or not.
So if Irene is reading this and thinking, “I was just trying to follow the “rule” of thirds when I asked for feedback, but I actually love the page as it is,” then she shouldn’t feel like she needs to “fix” her layout at all.
Hopefully that helps both Vicki and Irene, and anyone else who’swondered about this!
P.S.> If you think you’d benefit from seeing design feedback on layouts people are struggling with, I added a recording of this webinar to the Member Videos last Friday. If you’re a member you can find it there now. If not, follow the link to learn about getting a membership for yourself.
I have some beef with something we keep saying on the Roundtable.
Have you heard us say on the show that your family doesn’t expect a Monet or a Picasso?
That your kids just want to see their pictures and read their stories?
That they’ll have no idea whether the paper is on trend this season or released in 2005, or that you didn’t make a visual triangle?
Is the advice true? Yes.
But did it help you feel better about pages you make but don’t like?
Probably not.
And why is that?
It’s because we’re not just sharing our pages with our children. We’re also online sharing our pages with other scrapbookers. So let’s be real — the pressure is still on.
And it’s also because a huge part of our motivation is the joy of making beautiful stuff.
Because we value aesthetics and skill.
When did it become wrong to want to gain or improve skills?
It didn’t.
So how do you gain and improve your scrapbook design skills?
You cycle through these steps over and over again:
And on and on…
Learn design principles from good explanations and lots of examples. That’s what I’m trying to give you with my videos.
And what about the analyzing? This means you look for the principles in action on great pages. Or you look for the missing principles that would have helped a page out.
Then you try it on a page.
And as you continue to learn more principles, you’ll get it more and more.
It’s a cycle.
You ready to roll?
You can jump onto that cycle of improvement today with a Paperclipping Membership.
Start with any of my video tutorials, get lots of explanations and examples from me, see how to analyze a page, and then continue the cycle with each episode.
Did you know there are almost 175 videos in the membership to learn from?
What will it be like when you send your oldest or youngest off to college away from home? What was it like, if you’ve already done it?
Cindy Wick had designed the left side of this page with all these wonderful pictures which give a comprehensive view of the sending off of her daughter. Notice the variety of visuals –from the Motel 6 to the sub sandwiches to the shopping cart full of stuff to the goodbye’s — that will trigger very specific memories for Cindy and her daughter forever.
Once Cindy got all the photos and the fun design on her page, she realized she had a big story to tell with lots of mom-feelings to share, but not enough space. The page sat on her table while she tried to figure out what to do, and then…
A super hero of the day flew in in the form of Paperclipping Episode 173 – A Journaling Design technique!
(I realize the above statement is as un-humble as it gets! I hope you don’t mind a little bit of boasting!).
I am really proud because I read Cindy’s journaling and it’s so moving. What a shame it would have been had she decided to condense it to make it fit, or remove some photos instead!
And of course, the icing on the cake was that by using the tutorial’s idea she was able to have fun and share her own feelings of pride and celebration for her daughter through the visual design and all the wonderful little details.
Turns out you really can have it all!
Doesn’t her design show celebration and growth all at once?
So I wanted to share it with you.
Cindy said some pretty great things about her Paperclipping Memberhsip, too, and I hope it’s okay for me to be a proud mama of my videos and quote some of what she said:
While I’m at it, I should say that I am a member of paperclipping and I really have gotten so much out of my membership. I consider myself a decent page designer, but I still learn new things from Noell all the time! She has a way of introducing things in a new and fresh way ~ it always gets me thinking creatively.
That’s probably because her way of teaching design is to get you to think of design principles as flexible, instead of using more concrete methods…Her videos are SO different, creative, and well thought out, I’ll probably be a fan for life.
(Thanks so much, Cindy!).
Okay, gushing moment over.
If you haven’t read Cindy’s journaling yet, please do! It’s an awesome example of how to share your own wonderful human emotional stories!
To see a larger version, click here to see her blog post, then click on the layout itself.
Want to see what all the hubbub around the Paperclipping videos is about?
(Did I just say hubbub?).
Click here to find out and maybe you’ll get the solutions you need to your scrapbooking dilemmas! >> http://www.paperclipping.com/membership
I want to get some succulents for inside and out the home and since my expertise with potted plants has always been to kill them, I thought I would try expanding my skills and see if I can learn to keep them alive!
So I was watching this video on YouTube and thought it was a fun little demonstration on the basics of design. I personally learned design by studying how it’s applied in many different fields, so I thought I’d share this with you for a different take!
Are you ready to dig much deeper into design than the mere basics? What if the in-depth training was specifically for scrapbokers?
Check out my design course – Design Your Story: From the Ground Up.
Do you watch So You Think You Can Dance? Go ahead and consider it one of your scrapbooking classes because it can help you enhance your scrapbooking design skills. Much of my own design understanding came from my past experience as a dancer.
Rather than tell you, let me show you what I’m talking about…
This amazingly talented little dancer, Payton Johnson, was an assistant at a dance convention Trinity recently attended. For me the dance she performs in the video is about lines and contrast. In particular, it’s the contrast between different types of lines and the emotions they communicate.
Different types of lines tell different types of stories. Watch how Payton’s graceful flowing lines jerk into harsh angles with lots of tension and then dissolve into soft carefree light-hearted curves again.
What are those two types of lines communicating to you as she switches back-and-forth between them?
And how does that translate into design for scrapbooking?
Angled lines.
Curving Lines.
You can also mix the two to strike a balance of both for your story.
Whether in dance or scrapbooking, the lines we create have a vocabulary.
That’s why there’s a whole section on lines in Lesson 2 of my new design course, Design Your Story: From the Ground Up. In it I also show the visual meanings you can communicate using horizontal and vertical lines and a whole lot of other things, like patterns and space.
What are you saying through your designs?
Find out by taking the course: Design Your Story: From the Ground Up.
Two of the more common questions scrapbookers want to know are:
Someone asked me one of these during my True Scrap class at the end of my presentation and I felt like I let her down because I really don’t believe you can give an adequate answer in just a few sentences.
The most common answer I hear to the question, “How do you know when to stop?” is “When you feel like you’re done, take one thing off the page.”
This answer may be adequate for certain scrapbookers, but it’s definitely not a principle that applies in general.
How does that help someone like me, who had to force herself to learn to add the first embellishment? (I have many old scrapbooking pages that have a background, photos, and photo mattes. And that is it!).
Or anyone who tends to use too few items, rather than too many?
Which of the item do you take off?
What if the page looks off-balance when you remove an item?
As scrapbookers, we’re fortunate to have lots of beautiful and amazing embellishment options at our fingertips. You can’t say the same thing for paint or charcoal pencil artists.
On the one hand, we’re very lucky. On the other hand, our embellishment obsession distracts us from learning overall design composition. This is the problem: We’re so engrossed in the wonderful details of the embellishments that they’re the first and main thing we want to learn and focus our time on.
If you master three concepts, which I cover heavily in my video tutorials for Paperclipping Members, you will never have to worry about where to put the embellishments, or when to stop because you’ll just know. Here are the three concepts:
Beauty is just a by-product. If you’re overly focused on how beautiful the embellishments are, you’re in danger of…
If instead, you focus on using them only to meet the design needs of your layouts, you will know exactly…
Gathering embellishments — in other words, layering them or clustering them — is a particularly good way to draw people into your page and make them want to stay and look a lot longer. Some of the ways to do that are to…
Gather embellishments into a frame around a photo.
Make a cluster of contrasting embellishments on a line or in a space that needs more visual weight or color.
Soften lines and form an implied directional curving line with your embellishments.
Today we’ve released a video tutorial to the Paperclipping Members that demonstrates all of these things and more. You will get to see me gather and place the embellishments for three of these four scrapbook layouts. You may watch the trailer by clicking the video below:
Are you ready to watch the entire tutorial? If you are Paperclipping Member, please login to the Membership Area to watch it there, or find it in your iTunes library.
If you are not a Paperclipping Member, you can find out about membership by clicking here!